Guerrilla Food is about being poor and hungry, and the almost nuptial romance that I have with food. It's about being pissed off at what the American home kitchen has become and taking our food culture back from those that have ruined it. I hope to open a discourse about where it all went wrong and how we can fix our tattered cuisine.

Thursday, December 28, 2006

When it Strains it Bores

Boiling anything other than rice or pasta should be punishable by death by, you got it... boiling. So put away your strainers America and start steaming, sautéing and yes, simmering.

Okay okay, sure, there are wonderful dishes like corned beef, or even some English boiled meat dishes that threaten to make my point invalid. I say however, that those dishes are “poached” and not boiled. There is also the occasional Brussels Sprout or Broccoli that does great when boiled quickly and then shocked in ice water. But my main focus of this episode of Guerrilla Food is to do battle with the notion that it is okay to boil vegetables. It’s not.

Sure childhood images of huge pots of simmering green beans with ham hocks and black eyed peas being beaten into submission by a couple quarts of rolling H²O pop into my mind. The key word here however is simmer. That’s right, 212˚F is simply too hot for essential nutrients as well as many flavor components to survive. I’d feel much better about eating beans that were simmering away at 180˚F for three hours, than at 212˚F for 30 minutes.

Who has three hours to dedicate to simmering black-eyed-peas you ask? Well shame on you for asking. Nothing produces more lifeless and limp boring psydo-vegetation than boiling. I hope you do something really awesome like cure cancer during the couple hours you “saved” by boiling your vegetables.

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About Me

I began my adventures into the culinary trenches when I moved to Munich Germany. I was a painfully typical college student, i.e. drank and smoked pot all day instead of going to class. With a disgraceful GPA, I dropped out of school to move to Europe. Five years later I was straightened out enough to come back and finish school.
While in Munich, I became a food junkie. My kitchen was a mini fridge and two stove eyes. It was in the corner of my living room that was also my bed room. That little Küche was like my studio.
I landed a consulting job so I had money to follow my obsession. I begged chefs to let me into their kitchens. I installed software for a Chinese chef in exchange for three months training. I harassed a German chef into letting me cook in his restaurant. I had two French Chef friends who humored my questions. And Tuesday nights were pizza night at an Italian friend’s house who owned a pizzeria in Rome. I absorbed it all. Now back in the states, I have worked my way through college as a cook at a health food restaurant. I am now the culinary specialist there and am still foaming at the mouth to learn more about the foods we eat.